Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain why an expertly configured site is different than a professionally configured website. You will also understand how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and configured, you can bring new visitors automatically simply by consistently publishing fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any and every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going fine in the widget-making manufacturing plant when the machinery suddenly stops.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, heads out directly to the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer from his tool box and makes a single tap near the right side of the box.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The floor manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring site settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure things will work as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The idea behind adding external sites is that all content will be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your network, content pointing back to your site will get automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, use your details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, your account data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin and automatically sent to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify your update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web site is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically start generating web traffic is add content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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